Phone Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1110, the Preventing Harassment through Outbound Number Enforcement, ``PHONE,'' Act of 2009. I strongly support this important piece of legislation that aims to protect Americans from spoofing.

Spoofing involves the use of a false caller ID to hide the caller's true identity in order to commit fraud or some other abusive act. The PHONE Act of 2009 targets spoofing by prohibiting the use of caller ID information to hide the caller's true identity in order to wrongfully obtain anything of value or to commit other abusive acts. In recent years, spoofing technology has become readily available through Internet telephone equipment and Web sites specifically set up to spoof. Because call recipients are under the impression that the telephone call is legitimate, they sometimes divulge personal and private information to the spoofer. Identity thieves have used spoofing to mislead call recipients into revealing personal financial information to commit identity theft, fraudulently authorize stolen credit cards, and to arrange for fraudulent money transfers.

According to the Federal Trade Commission's 2008 Identity Theft Consumer Complaint Data, Georgia ranked 7, out of the 50 States, for identity theft complaints. Last year, Georgians made 10,748 identity theft complaints. The Federal Trade Commission calculated that 111 complaints were made for every 100,000 Georgia residents.

I join the Chairman in urging my colleagues to support this bill. This legislation can protect constituents in my district from identity thieves who use spoofing as their vice.

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